MAD MEN on AMC - Seasons 7(a) & & 7(b)

The other thing I noticed was that the show didn't give us an ending for Dawn, she just quietly disappeared without anyone seemingly noticing, which I'm sure was entirely intentional on Weiner's part.

Matt DC OTM re the literal reading is better

stan and peggy was like the ending of a meg ryan rom-com or something, but a really good one, and it felt out of place on mad men but it's okay because i really like peggy and tbh i really like meg ryan rom-coms.

Also in the middle of that Peggy is also choosing to stay with McCann and push for Creative Director over walking away and going into business with Joan. Maybe Stan will hold her back from that but I also think he's a bit too ineffectual for that (and their relationship is probably doomed because it's Mad Men). And they already showed us one scene where Peggy pushes back on McCann for what she wants and gets it.

Contrast with Joan who is really not permitted to have it both ways, but she was always going to choose another push for success on her own terms rather than settling down with another creepy and controlling dude. But Peggy getting to do things that Joan can't has been a theme for the whole series, I don't think the Stan moment undercuts the idea that her career is in the ascendant at all.

LEAVE STAN ALONE!!!
--Johnny Fever

otm

I honestly think it was a brilliant ending, and I wasn't sure right up until the very last shot. SMDH at anyone comparing it to Lost.

yeah in the final moments i was preparing myself to be disappointed, i still think it was a bit of a cheapshot, but they were always going to find it v hard to have any kind of significant resolution for don.

I think joan ends up where she ends up because it's not what she ever thought she wanted when the show began. she probably thought she wanted a man and traditional ideas of love, and spent much of the show as an indirect protector of the patriarchy by upholding the male-structured office environment. her realizing that that's not necessary for her success and happiness, after so long not being able to even entertain such an idea, is perfect.

conversely w peggy she'd spent so long being disappointed by and fucked with by men, was resigned to looking for fulfillment in professional triumphs, and it's great for her to see that she can have real love without it derailing her astonishing drive. not that she needs it in some conventional way, but that it's right there and she can have it.

Like many I was a bit underwhelmed by the ending at first, but the more I think about it the more I like it. It presents a pretty cynical view of the 60s in the end; Don Draper wasn't turned into a hippy, hippy ideals were assimilated and commodified by Don Draper. I wonder how much of his breakdown in the commune had to do with alcohol withdrawl?

The Peggy/Stan resolution was cheesy sure, but also really lovely and totally earned imo. A great way to break the tension of years of obliqueness.

"conversely w peggy she'd spent so long being disappointed by and fucked with by men, was resigned to looking for fulfillment in professional triumphs"

Wait what? IIRC it was mostly she who was doing the "disappointing" and rather than being "resigned' to professional disappointments she was way more interested in those than hanging with the shlubs she was dating.

Also in the middle of that Peggy is also choosing to stay with McCann and push for Creative Director over walking away and going into business with Joan.

that's a positive thing. She's not going for Creative Director at McCann. Following the advice of the headhunter, she'll leave the agency after a few years and continue her ascent. Joining Joan would've been nice to have her name on the door, but as discussed w/ Stan, she wouldn't be doing what she loved. Her path is in advertising, not writing industrial films.

In some ways surely Peggy's is the bleakest ending of all? She's the Little Train That Could, some talent but at the end of the day 'just' a good copy writer with aspirations.Then BAM

Hai guys remember me? Well, I nearly drunk myself to death and then I met some hippies and I guess I just accidentally invented the most successful advert of all time!

(cue champagne all round, Don being hailed as a genius, Peggy going back to working on pantyhose and realising she'll never get that kind of break.)

...also Peggy whips out that script for 1200 iirc so all the Jo-Ggy shippers out there have a world where she works under Joan in a vendor relationship

Don't read Peggy's professional ending as bleak (aside from fact that she appears to get some personal satisfaction from Stan-mance). She's going to take longer to get to where she wants to go than it would take Don or than she would want it to take (which is surely a bit of a bummer) but show also makes it clear that she is a singular talent and that she will get there. There is plenty of triumph for her.

except it's in advertising.

Not everyone's lifelong dream is to be a message board curmudgeon.

does less harm.

Does less of everything.

i was an ad agency peon for 8 years, where's my show?

was Willy Loman ever invoked directly in any of the 90+ episodes?

i was an ad agency peon for 8 years, where's my show?

2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

i dont think the show has ever tried to hide that the inherent engine of advertising is corrupt despite stating that artistry and craft can be involved in its creation, i mean much of season 6 is focused around creating an ad campaign for a chevy sedan that was a notorious lemon (the vega iirc) and choosing that car as the product was v deliberate

Does less of everything.

The Zen of Morbs

i was an ad agency peon for 8 years, where's my show?

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, May 19, 2015 10:23 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its funny u shd ask cause ive been working on this script

i dont think the show has ever tried to hide that the inherent engine of advertising is corrupt despite stating that artistry and craft can be involved in its creation, i mean much of season 6 is focused around creating an ad campaign for a chevy sedan that was a notorious lemon (the vega iirc) and choosing that car as the product was v deliberate

and Lucky Strike and Coke.

Jaguar

i haven't read all of the theorizing about the end itt but it didn't even occur to me that don would have created the "hilltop" coke ad when i watched it, if only because this show has always been very diligent about keeping major cultural moments on the periphery of the drama. to turn don's breakdown and recovery into some alternate-reality origin story for a famous soda commercial feels like cheap fan service to me. and it well may be! who knows. but i appreciate the ambiguity of the ending so i can at least pretend otherwise.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/watch-the-documentary-that-explains-why-don-draper-ended-up-meditating-in-california-in-the-mad-men-finale-20150518

like, don draper isn't forrest gump, you know? we don't have to retcon him into history!

Don Draper wasn't turned into a hippy, hippy ideals were assimilated and commodified by Don Draper.

If only he'd had this epiphany 4 years prior when listening to "Tomorrow Never Knows," he could've spared many people a lot of grief.

tbf hippie ideals were too unformed and positive to escape eventual commodification

and the Jeremy Davies "punk rock car" ad? which bombed, on the merits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhfxI8T2cU

tbf nothing can escape commodification

true enough

lol oh davies, you and your junkie skulk

tbf nothing can escape commodification

― lag∞n

I'm sort of left with that being one of the major points of the series.

People in advertising really can have a bizarre life outlook after a while. A friend in the industry realized the amount of cognizant dissonance when her firm was working for a large national banking/loan company that was as culpable for the home mortgage crisis as any other bank, maybe even moreso. They weren't the helpful, life-enabling savings and loan institution their advertisement made them out to be, nor were they the one-note profiteers of the nightly news. For her, they had to be both.

as a person in a variation of that line of work i can confirm it definitely sucks for those reasons sometimes bordering on frequently & you deal with a lot of gray-area shit but fuck, i got rent and loans to pay

If the show had been set in the '70s and ended up around '79, it all would have pointed towards Heinz's "Anticipation" commercial.

Not the Mean Joe Greene Coke ad?

In that context it was a deeply cynical finale in the guise of a sugared ending

tbf nothing can escape commodification

― lag∞n

I'm sort of left with that being one of the major points of the series.

I agree with both of these.

To me the ending was the previous season's ending on a larger scale - instead of coopting the family meal with Burger Chef, they've coopted the search for the self as it were.

Watching the Coke ad made me infuriatingly angry. Then the jingle got stuck in my head for 7 hours.

people under 40-45, had you never seen the Coke ad before?

i was familiar with it as being legendary also feel like they reran it or remade it in the 90s

I've seen. Also heard the song a million times. And as lagoon says they've remade it a few times.

I've seen/heard it a million times.

Yeah i heard it a million times. Did the remake it? That sounds familiar..

Pretty sure I heard it first on Negativland's "Dispepsi".

This one had a much bigger impact on me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ThA2zlnm6g

It ran on TV for about five years straight. We sang the de-Coked version in school and thought we were very funny singing '...and furni-SHIT with love' with special emphasis.

We used to sing it in school too, so it had legs into the early 90s anyway.

but you sang about "love" rather than "Coke," right?

(and snow-white turtle doves, no subtext there eh)

I'm sure they ran it sometimes on British telly when I was a kid in the 80s. Certainly very familiar.

people under 40-45, had you never seen the Coke ad before?

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, May 19, 2015 5:47 PM (1 hour ago)

I remember Oasis having a big hit with that song on their first album. Seriously though, I was aware of it before that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUoVQ-kB7DQ

In a way I kind of like the ad's optimism and naivety. Ads nowadays feature characters that are all judgey and cynical hyper-consumers.